


A Shining in the Shadows

by utsu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mermaid, F/F, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsu/pseuds/utsu
Summary: Sakura looked at her and burned, so she painted living flames in the midnight sky and hoped somewhere in the depths of the bated ocean, a creature gleaming and glowing with every kind of matching heat might look up to her gift and ignite.





	

The first time Haruno Sakura saw her, it wasn’t with her eyes but her _energy_. The campfire gleamed and glowed, effervescent green and hissing. The wood bubbled beneath it, and Sakura reached out until the flame curled around the feather soft tips of her fingers, the frailty of her wrist.

The flames moved over her skin, undulating with her every gasp, and she clutched onto the feeling of curiosity flickering in the shadows between each flame. It was there, in the blue ignition of energy in the center of every flicker of heat; there, in the way the wind’s whispers shifted from song to siren.

Chills raced down Sakura’s spine, a gentle cascade of warning in every raised follicle.

It should have frightened her. The sudden crouch of a storm overhead, where the night sky had just been so effortlessly clear—stars shining and breathing and reaching. The first drops of ice-cold water against the heat of her bare skin, and the call of the forest around her. She lifted her face to the rain and smelled salt in the air, an ocean overhead, slipping through the layers of the present.

“Who are you?” Sakura breathed, and the wind carried her voice on a wave to the cliff-side, over the ledge and into the foam of the ocean. There, it became nothing more than a lost inquiry, a curious wondering. Sakura kept her fingertips in the fire and pressed until embers scorched against her skin, bending and giving way under her subtle pressure. She pushed deeper still, until the ashes feathered.

She should have been frightened.

The fire told more than it wanted, pressed by her insistency, and Sakura devoured it’s every telling with vigor. She closed her eyes and allowed the rain and the rising winds—warnings, warnings—to blow her hair around in violent swirls. The fire moved through her and she saw scales and thought _koi_ , but they shifted sharp and insidious, and what she felt was _dragon_. The fire was hers, though, entirely. Instead of any kind of heat all she saw was a frigid absence of anything—a void disturbed only periodically with slices of golden light, and the incandescent glimmer of air beneath water.

The absence of it all took from her, even as far away as she was from the ocean. Her breath, leeched from her lungs and plucked from her throat, and the fingers that took were _gentle_ , and curious. Sakura tried to grasp the energy, to pull back the air and the privacy she had lost—ironic, considering her own prying—but all she managed was to choke on a last glimpse of something that should have terrified her, something that a normal person would have turned and ran from without a second thought.

She altered her earlier wondering, and thought instead: _what_ are you?

Sakura had always been different, with her chakra and her crystals, her affinity for the touch of fire without burning anything into her skin but images and memories. If she had been any kind of normal, she would not have been living on the crest of the ocean in an uninhabited forest, away from the life of the city. Away from family and friends, where she could reach into the layers of the world without having to worry about the opinion or ridicule of others. Here, she could just _be_ , and the world accepted her wholeheartedly.

She would not run; instead, she chose to look deeper, closer, unafraid. She pressed and she lurched until the stars she saw weren’t in the night sky but in her eyes and the energy drawing out the life of her moved to circle her throat. Her heart raced against the cage of her ribs, a bone graveyard of feeling, and just before she lost consciousness she did something reckless.

She followed the energy of a curious monster back into its den, tucked below and hidden so carefully in the middle of absolute nothingness, and she _looked within_.

And something looked back.

 

✧

 

When Sakura woke, there was sand pressed against her cheek, salt water grazing almost lovingly over the crest of her lips—one final goodbye before racing back home to its depths. She blinked herself back into consciousness, lifting herself and immediately looking for the sun’s position in the sky. Her cheek burned, flushed and undoubtedly pink.

“Interesting,” she whispered, as she lifted her arm to rub the sand from the skin of her cheek. It took her only a moment of gauging her surroundings before she recognized the chakra radiating somewhere nearby, and stiffened. It was an instinctual reaction, a sympathetic nervous system response, caught between the will to fight and the urge for flight.

Sakura turned over her shoulder and extended her hand, the verdant shift of noxious energy building from her pores with ease. It danced over her skin, a flame of her own making, and she called, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The sky was clear; all signs of the previous storm gone. Sakura wondered how many days it had been—this had not been the first time a treacherous energy had gotten the better of her and stolen her consciousness right out of her body. Usually she woke with a migraine she had to concoct a very specific kind of potion to cure, and her hands shook for the better half of the day. Her body’s responses were normally rather mild, nothing to be too concerned about, though she _had_ had a few run-ins with malevolent energies when she’d lived in the land of Mist. That place was a cesspool of bitterness and cruelty, an unforgiving populace to match the unforgiving landscape.

Sakura still slept with her third eye open, since leaving Mist. She still glanced far too often over her shoulder, and stepped carefully past gravesites and temples. Something about the fog had exacerbated the darkness of chakra there, and it hadn’t been uncommon for Sakura to wake up in an unknown area, her body borrowed or stolen or simply _moved_.

The village hidden in the leaves was far more forgiving, in terms of chakra, and of energy. The people had their issues, but bloodthirst was particularly low on the village-wide scale. Sakura appreciated that, considering that when she had moved back home she’d still just been a witch apprentice. Her master had detoured somewhere south, disappearing behind an impossibly thick cloud of sand just as abruptly as she had appeared in Sakura’s life.

Sakura missed her sometimes, and thought of her often. The turbidity of the ocean reminded her of Tsunade viscerally, the scale of it and the chaos, both. Sakura’s eyes caught and held on the reflection of the sun cutting a sharp line through the shifting surface, even as her mind registered a dull but spreading twinge in her chest.

It _ached_ , feeling suspiciously light, and for several long moments she sat blinking sightlessly out at the ocean. The wind picked up the fine ends of her hair, skimming just over her shoulders, and she tried to breathe around the novelty of shuddered suspicion. She lifted her trembling hand to her chest, fingertips delving against skin, and felt the slice of a scream swirling in the base of her throat.

Just then, while shattered disbelief pieced itself together into something resembling frightened realization, something in the depths of the sea _shifted_.

Sakura _remembered_ this—the sweet taste of curiosity, and the sharp danger of intent laced under the surface, so incredibly, devastatingly, _gentle_ —

“Come out!” She called, voice deceptively steady. She felt weak, and empty, and cold. She was in no shape to protect herself, to fight or to fly. But even still, running from danger just wasn’t in her deck of cards.

She had always been chaos; uncontrolled power, wild and aimless. She had killed persons and monsters with a deft flick of her wrist, and nothing more. Energy clung to her and she molded it in her hands, shaped it into something she could wield with perfect dexterity, despite the fluctuations surrounding her. She could hone anything so long as she could get her hands on it. The challenge of it was growing beyond simple molding, and using her own talent for subconsciously beckoning energy to strengthen her own chakra.

That was where Tsunade had come in. She had molded Sakura into something contained, a warrior and a weapon in one. A force to be reckoned with.

She had always known there were incredible beasts out in the world—her own brother harbored the very power of the sun, tucked lovingly just beneath his sternum, and in the cracks of his ever-smiling mouth—but Sakura had not yet prepared herself to face them with malice. She had always thought herself clever enough to avoid them, to be ten steps ahead of their malevolence, untouchable.

Sakura had not prepared for this. This; a creature that moved like fire but left ice in its wake; that reached out with an unabated curiosity that took, and took, and _gentled_. The creature moved with a stillness that Sakura could feel, and not feel, and interest shrouded in something insidious and reaching like apprehension like uncertainty rebounded inside of her. She pressed the hand perched against her chest harder until her nails dug crescents into her skin, and the absolute emptiness of her chest echoed back against her fingertips.

Sakura focused out in the distance, where the water of the ocean suddenly began to part, and felt fear trap every ounce of her in that same stillness until she became total absence of thought and of feeling, and knew only this: that the void of this energy that she could see in her mind felt so impossibly like the sudden space where her heart belonged, _belonged_ , and _wasn’t—_

Before her eyes, a monster rose from the depths, shrouded in glistening shifts of sea salt with lips parted just enough around too many teeth, and a voice that made no sound beyond the frantically pounding of Sakura’s missing heart.

 _Lub-dub, lub-dub_ , the monster said in the dialect of Sakura’s pulse, and the empty cavern of her chest _burned_.

And it was then, at last, that Haruno Sakura came to know fear.

 

✧

 

“Give it back,” Sakura called, ignoring the tremor in her usually iron-steady voice as she clutched nearly frantically at her chest. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

The creature took the shape of a woman, cascades of midnight hair swirling in the surface. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, sharp and startlingly perceptive. They flickered over Sakura’s expression with that same pungent curiosity, and somewhere tucked away in Sakura’s subconscious was the realization that this woman—this _creature_ —missed nothing.

Sakura said nothing as the creature studied her, even when she noticed the slight flush of her cheeks. Incredulous, Sakura felt her brows purse in confusion. It was when she shifted to stand, her every movement slow and controlled so as to keep the creature from interpreting any kind of threat, that she finally moved.

And it was then that Sakura realized exactly _what_ she was, from the undulating movement as the water moved around her and she approached Sakura with the same kind of caution that Sakura had shifted to stand with. From the waist down she was hidden, tucked into the ever blue of the ocean, until she came close enough for Sakura to see the glistening of silver scales reflective of the sky light.

Sakura could not look away from the woman’s tail, her fins; the way that every individual scale caught and held the colors of the sky and reflected them in silver shades outlined in glowing gold. Even right in front of Sakura’s eyes, so clearly a _mermaid_ , Sakura could not help but to think of a _dragon_.

The mermaid shifted in the water in such a way that Sakura knew she was aware of Sakura’s disbelieving perusal. There was a feeling of nervousness that radiated from her, surprising Sakura enough to bring her eyes back up and away from the diaphanous wispiness of the ends of her fins.

“You brought me here,” Sakura whispered, blinking as she watched heat flare rosy over the mermaid’s pale cheeks. Again, this startled Sakura into silence. She watched emotion flicker across the woman’s eyes, the only openly expressive part of her thus far. Her lips relaxed, sealed, and she seemed far less threatening without her sneer. Her hair stuck wetly to the skin of her face, her eyelashes impossibly long and dabbled with droplets of sea water. There were what seemed to be minor burns on her shoulders, the skin bright and reddened, and Sakura remembered the kiss of her flames against her fingertips, running through her system on a livewire, and the way this new energy had pushed into her despite the burn.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Sakura found herself saying, eyes peeling away from her shoulders.

The mermaid’s lips curled up in the corner just enough to express a quiet sort of joy that Sakura couldn’t quite understand. She flicked her tail until her fins breached the surface, giving Sakura a clearer glimpse of the incredible play of incandescent color smoothing over each and every scale—and Sakura understood this clearly.

Apology accepted.

“You know,” Sakura said, still staring, completely transfixed. “I _am_ sorry…but _you_ were the one pushing.”

The mermaid dipped her head without hesitation, unashamed to admit to her own fault. Sakura found that…endearing.

She wondered why the woman would not speak, if she was shy or deceptive, waiting for Sakura to come closer to the edge of the ocean so she could pull her into the depths. The novelty of fear still resided inside of her—it had so much more room now that her heart had been stolen, and her chest had become an emptied cage. But there was something about the woman that made Sakura want to relax, to trust her. She didn’t underestimate the danger in that, or the potentiality of danger.

She had never encountered a mermaid with energy like _this_ , deceptively weak with an underlying strength that terrified. There was a razor-sharp focus, there, in the ability to be so deceptive. Sakura admired it in the same way she admired the strength of an enemy, with cautious curiosity. And she wondered about the mermaid who would not speak.

When the wind picked up and pushed her off-balance, she remembered the sudden change in her weight, the way that a mermaid had somehow stolen her heart straight out of the protective cavern of her chest. It reminded her of that first smile, small and sharp, and the way that her voice had curled around the exact beat of Sakura’s heart, as though the organ was wrapped up in the base of her throat.

Sakura’s shoulders stiffened, and she forced herself to take a step towards the water. It coursed over her toes, still bare, and it was surprisingly warm. She frowned, reaching up to touch the left side of her chest and waiting for the mermaid’s eyes to follow the gesture as she knew that she would.

 “Give it _back_ ,” she demanded, and she was proud that her voice was completely under her control again. She tucked fear as far down within herself as she could, and didn’t take her eyes from the creature in front of her. She was ever-aware of the danger and the potential deception of her, and she was _not_ going to become fish food by underestimating a beautiful woman. Again.

That same beautiful woman had stolen more than just her heart, but her consciousness, her will, her movement. She’d somehow drawn Sakura out of the forest and down to the shore, and Sakura realized all at once that there had been nothing stopping her from dragging Sakura all the way into the water—into that pitch black stillness.

And yet, she hadn’t.

“I apologize,” a new voice whispered, and Sakura’s eyes leapt immediately to meet the unflinchingly transparent gaze. “I was…curious.”

Sakura paused. The absence of a pounding pulse was bizarre, the lack of it loud in its emptiness. She wondered where this mermaid was hiding it. She wondered at her _curiosity_.

“You were curious?” She reiterated, and then without waiting for a response: “So you stole my heart?”

The woman flushed, submerging so suddenly that Sakura flinched. It was only for a moment, however, before she re-emerged, glistening with droplets of salt water anew.

“I was,” she admitted, cheeks pink. She was so clearly embarrassed, but then in the next moment with startling confidence, she glanced up and met Sakura’s gaze without hesitation and said, “I was drawn to the heat of you.”

Sakura found herself slowly shaking her head, with equal parts disbelief and disapproval. She could feel her walls falling away, her defenses unraveling. There was something so _innocent_ about this woman that felt too real to be a trap. There was a strength in her, an obvious power curled around hidden depths of potential, but Sakura’s gut was telling her that the danger had passed.

She wanted to believe it, even as she remained partially defensive, prepared for any kind of assault. Tsunade had taught her too well to underestimate an opponent because of supposed innocence.

“That doesn’t give you the right to take what doesn’t belong to you,” Sakura demanded. And then, because curiosity had the better of her, she added, “How are you doing this anyways? And what’s your name? I should be dead.”

The mermaid startled at this, automatically shaking her head. Her hands rose above the surface and yet she didn’t submerge, and Sakura wondered about that, too.

“I would never kill an innocent person!” She exclaimed, openly aghast. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, either. I just…”

“You just?”

The woman flushed, brighter than before. Her voice was so quiet the movement of the ocean almost swallowed it whole, and Sakura had to strain to hear it. “I just _wanted_.”

And then it was Sakura’s turn to flush, even as interest curled up within her, coiling around her distrust and soothing the tension from it. Her shoulders gradually became lax, and with a sudden decision that went against her better judgment, she allowed her walls to drop. She perched herself in the sand, curling her arms around her legs and resting her chin against her knees. She studied the woman in front of her with open marvel, and ignored the alarm bells ringing in her mind and warning her of danger.

They were entirely her own; the mermaid made no move to show any signs of aggression or malevolence. The force and power of her energy remained, but she was controlling it, honing it into something Sakura could barely get a handle on. She had such _incredible_ control.

“Well, alright,” Sakura found herself saying, reaching up to scratch idly at her hair. It did not escape her notice that she was behaving particularly calmly for someone who had just realized that one of the most important organs of the human body, if not _the_ most important organ, had been stolen from her. She accepted her calmness and moved forward, not excessively worried about being attacked by anything more than her own incessant inquisitiveness. “But that doesn’t really answer my question. Either of my questions.”

The mermaid laughed, a low and quiet thing, and the sound of it moved through Sakura in waves. Chills raced down her arms and Sakura wondered if this was some sort of attack. But the woman merely reached up to tuck some of the longer hair by her jawline back and away behind her ear.

“My name is Hinata. And I have abilities,” the woman began, pursing her lips. Sakura watched her think over the words, deciding how best to explain, to describe the impossibility of what she had done. “The best way I can explain it is that my family has special blood, and it allows us to have special abilities.”

“And yours is heart removal?” Sakura joked, lips quirking. Hinata’s smile was an answering reflection, catching color and light in just the same way that her scales did.

“Mine is chakra control.”

 “Yeah,” Sakura mused, nodding her head. “I definitely noticed that.”

Hinata flushed, hiding her face beneath the surface of the water. She did it so smoothly, so quickly, that Sakura knew instantly it was an inherent habit of hers. And for some reason, Sakura felt pleased that she knew this secret about this person, this creature, that maybe no one else did.

“I got too excited last night,” Hinata admitted, her words bubbling against the surface. Her eyes glanced down beneath the surface, watching her hands move through the water, fingertips quivering. “You were so _bright_.”

Sakura knew that the question she should be asking was something along the lines of, “What do you mean I was bright?”

But instead, for some reason she wasn’t quite comfortable enough yet to admit to, she asked, “Am I not bright anymore?”

Hinata floundered, flustered. “You are!” She exclaimed, bobbing up above the water in just the right way for Sakura’s eyes to drop and heat to fill her cheeks. She couldn’t help but to _look_ ; Hinata was beautiful, and her exposed breasts were eye-catching. Sakura glanced back up to Hinata’s face with a sharp swallow and watched the flush of Hinata’s cheeks travel down the base of her throat, to spread lightly, faintly over her shoulders. Sakura felt amusement course through her, and suddenly she wanted to _tease_ her.

In more ways than one.

“You’re still bright, like star light,” Hinata went on to explain, trying to cover the physical sign of her embarrassment with conversation. Sakura didn’t know what she wanted to focus on the most: the beautiful flush on Hinata’s cheeks, the tempting view of her exposed chest, or the fact that this mysterious, powerful mermaid had just compared her to _star light_. “But when you conjoin with fire…” Hinata trailed off, breathlessly, and Sakura had to press her fingertips against her skin to remind herself not to move. She wanted to get closer, to reach out and touch Hinata in a way she hadn’t wanted to touch anyone in _ages_.

Instead, she focused on self-preservation, and her own amusement.

“Go on,” she said, not without laughter. Hinata shot her an exasperated glare that quickly dissipated, and it was so cute that had Sakura still had a heart, it surely would have leapt. “What do I look like to you when I read fire?”

“You _ignite,_ ” Hinata breathed, brazenly straightforward even while she was clearly embarrassed. “I’ve never seen anything or anyone so bright in my entire life.”

Sakura felt heat spreading through her body, a new kind of heat, one that wasn’t entirely unwelcome. She dug her toes into the sand and tilted her head, gazing loftily at the enigma in front of her.

Her stare seemed to move Hinata to speak from sheer force of nerves alone.

“That’s why I reached for you,” she explained, licking her lips.

Sakura lightened her tone, but didn’t hold back from her statement when she said, “Is that also why you took?”

Hinata ducked her head immediately, lifting a hand above the water to trace circles in the surface. The idle movement caught Sakura’s attention for only a second before she dismissed it, but then she began to see the swirling of the water spreading further and further out from Hinata’s fingertip and her attention was held _completely_.

If her suspicion was correct, then Hinata had some sort of control over the water.

“I apologize,” Hinata repeated bashfully. Sakura expected her to do something magical, to snap her fingers and replace Sakura’s heart as though it had never been stolen in the first place. Instead, she was surprised when Hinata straightened her shoulders and put some iron in her voice before saying, “I’m only borrowing it.”

As if she had no intention of giving it back until she was good and ready to.

Sakura wondered what would constitute her _wanting_ to give it back.

She swallowed.

 

✧

 

Sakura visited Hinata, the mysterious silver mermaid, daily. It became easy to lose track of time together, getting to know each other and their different worlds. Hinata told her of the depths, of the creatures and the flora. Sakura told her of the earth, of soil and growth and herbs. They taught each other about magic, and soon the magic of their conversation tied them together indefinitely. Friends.

But as always, Sakura eventually grew hungry. She lost track of time sitting there on the shore talking to the mermaid who held her heart, and she _enjoyed_ herself. Mind-boggling, really.

But as the sun ran from the chasing moon across the sky, Sakura found herself standing and dusting off her rear, preparing to head back to her home in the forest, and her comfortable bed tucked up in the trees.

Hinata startled at her movement, rising out of her position where she had been resting on her stomach with her cheeks in her hands, so close to the shore Sakura could have reached out and touched the silk of her hair. She pushed herself closer, close enough that most of her became exposed to the late afternoon air, and Sakura felt herself licking her lips.

“Are you leaving?” Hinata asked, unable or unwilling to disband the worry in her voice. That made Sakura smile, despite herself. She stretched her hands over her head, unintentionally pushing her chest out and listening to the pops in her spine. When she allowed her hands to drop back down to her sides, she glanced back to Hinata’s gaze and found her heavy-lidded. She was so unintentionally sensual, Sakura thought desperately, taking a few steps away from the shore.

“I have to eat,” Sakura explained.

“I can retrieve something for you,” Hinata stuttered, and Sakura blinked down at her. She couldn’t help the slow smile that crawled over her lips any more than she could the open amusement in her voice when she asked, “What would you get me from the ocean?”

“Anything,” Hinata breathed, and Sakura wondered if Hinata could feel the sudden frantic pounding of Sakura’s heart in the smooth column of her throat. “Anything.”

And Sakura, damned if it was foolish or dangerous or _both_ , believed her. She believed her wholeheartedly, this stranger, this strange creature. She had only just begun to know her, and already she felt she could trust her, knew that if she asked for a great white shark on a platter of reef and coral, that Hinata would dive deep and sink her teeth into the ocean’s greatest predator just to feed Sakura’s empty stomach.

It amused her that in this, Hinata would combat Sakura’s emptiness where before she had facilitated it. Sakura could not forget about her missing heart—it was like missing a limb, there was still phantom pain, phantom feelings. Sometimes when she looked at Hinata, she swore she could see an extra pulse pounding in her throat.

“That’s sweet of you,” Sakura said truthfully, softening her negation with a kind smile. “But I have to go home and do some work, too.”

“Healing potions,” Hinata said, an astute student of their time together.

Sakura’s smile softened even further, shamelessly fond. “Yes, potions. And gardening. I have many herbs that are about ready to be picked.”

Hinata’s entire expression shifted into shades of melancholy, downturned and sodden.

She said, “I wish I could go with you, Sakura-san.”

Sakura mulled over the words, and the shock she felt at hearing them. Coming up with the most reasonable, though perhaps riskiest measure, she said, “I’ll bring them to you. Tomorrow.”

Hinata’s entire countenance brightened like a sunrise, sun over barbed mountaintops, and she exclaimed, “Oh! I would love that.”

“Good,” Sakura agreed with a definitive nod, starting to walk backwards towards and away from the gentle creature she had mistakenly called monster just hours before. She wasn’t certain without a doubt that Hinata wasn’t still a monster—anyone could be something devastating, if it was all they knew—but she was kind and she listened to Sakura’s rambling with attentiveness and receptive thoughtfulness, and that…that was something no monster Sakura had ever met had done.

“There’s good soil at the base of the cliff,” Hinata called after her, and Sakura turned over her shoulder to smile back at her. Hinata may have the special blood, the all-seeing eyes, but Sakura was pretty good at seeing things too.

She could see right through Hinata, and she wasn’t opposed to what she was seeing.

“Maybe I’ll start a new garden there,” Sakura mused on cue, and Hinata’s smile was reward enough for it. “We can tend to it together, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that,” Hinata called, voice low, quieting. The thrum of night coming alive around them muted her voice, made it harder to hear her. Sakura waved and turned away, listening to the waves moving leisurely against the shore, closer and closer to her home. As she began her trek back up the plains, Sakura realized that she had not asked for her heart back before parting. It wasn’t that she had forgotten, really, but rather that she wasn’t so worried about it being permanently lost, or destroyed. If Hinata was a monster, she wasn’t the kind to harm a friend’s heart. Sakura knew this with certainty. So she wasn’t worried, even as she teetered in her steps and tried to readjust to the lightness of her chest, and the heaviness of her shoulders. The strangeness was worth it, somehow.

She trusted the care it was in.

 

✧

 

Sakura started looking forward to her trips to the shore. It was more than a sudden thought and desire, now, but an actual habit she enjoyed and looked forward to. Her feet took her to the ocean before she even knew where she was headed.

Sakura and Hinata started a garden together near the cliff’s base, close enough for Hinata to crawl across the shore and reach the herbs and crops with enough time to get back into the water should the sun blare down too mightily.

Sakura taught her the names of medicinal herbs and how they could be used, and brought her the best and purest remedies from her house. She made her various accessories from silk and velvet, handspun cloth. She threaded wire through leaves in every shade of fall and showed Hinata how to wear them around her throat, ruddy browns, scarlets, and milky greens against the cream of her delicate skin.

Hinata brought her treasures from the deepest corners of the ocean; broken off pieces of shipwreck caverns, fragmented tips of shark teeth long since shed, pearls that she ripped from clams as big as she was, and jewels the world above the sea still didn’t have names for. The first time Hinata placed one in Sakura’s hand—green, _like your eyes_ , Hinata had told her—the energy from it had nearly electrocuted her. She could still remember the electric current running along her veins, under her skin; it had been so long since anything in her body had _pumped_.

From that moment onwards, Sakura started paying attention to Hinata’s energy again. If there were gems and jewels in the ocean that the world didn’t know, with energy and presence that Sakura had never even _felt_ , then Hinata was even more of an anomaly than Sakura had ever thought. Hers was an energy that Sakura could not put her finger on, could not pin down and understand or control.

Especially after Hinata showed her how her bloodline limit actually _worked_. The surprised and endless curiosity that had plagued Sakura for _months_ after the first time she saw the branches of veins rise under Hinata’s skin, just beside her eyes. The way she could see things several kilometers away in perfect, striking clarity, and even more interesting—and frightening—was the way that she could draw animate and inanimate objects towards her from those same distances.

“This—” Sakura had stuttered, recognizing the feeling of Hinata’s chakra fluctuating around her.

“Yes,” Hinata had said, quietly, with such focus. “This is how I reached you.”

Sakura had expected Hinata’s energy to be unleashed while using her bloodline, but it was actually the opposite: it became even more _contained_. It thrummed along her skin and raised the hairs on Sakura’s arms, like static electricity but far, far more vibrant.

After several months of unending curiosity about Hinata’s abilities, Sakura had finally settled down enough to not completely lose it whenever she turned and found Hinata treading water with utter stillness, veins raised and eyes even sharper than usual.

Just the same, Hinata had finally grown more comfortable with Sakura’s ability to touch fire without garnering injury. The first time Sakura had put her hands into a fire right in front of Hinata’s eyes, the mermaid had nearly stolen her consciousness in a _blink_.

“What are you doing!” Hinata had demanded, when Sakura fought heartily against the gentle but insistent fingers of Hinata’s chakra wrapped around her mind.

“Stop, trust me,” she’d said, and without hesitation Hinata’s pressure had subsided, just like that. It was in moments like those that Sakura knew that Hinata felt two hearts racing inside of her, instead of one. It was in moments like those that Sakura felt disoriented and a little envious—she wanted to feel the way her heart responded to Hinata, too, because she knew it was different than how it responded to others.

That it was special.

Sakura looked into her fire and saw the promise of their changing relationship, the intrigue of their possible union, and though it startled her, she didn’t look away.

Not once, not even to blink.

 

✧

 

Sakura never stopped looking, but soon she learned to _see_. The beauty in every one of Hinata’s chirping laughs, the elegance of the slope of her neck, the fine, lilting slopes of her facial structure; the fuses of her eyes, alight with splendor the moment she caught sight of Sakura walking towards her, sand beneath and between her toes; the delicate shiver that runs down Hinata’s body after Sakura’s fingertips trace the silken lines of her. She made Sakura _feel_ , so many things, everything at once, and it became so much that she started _creating_ in response.

Fire that gave, rather than took; precious gifts of molten ash and stone, molded by heat into the perfect shape of gifts and trinkets. This was her own exploration, Sakura’s version of diving into the deep just to find something, anything that might resemble a _fraction_ of how beautiful Hinata was. The flames danced under her hands, pressed flickering kisses against her reddened skin, slow roasting the only gift Sakura could not get out of her mind.

She reached into the flames for months, tenderly crafting, herbs and spices, bones of long-forgotten creatures scattered over the land now harvested in her embers; Sea shells and charcoal pearls, a jar full of sand right where the water kissed it at noon; five fingers of pink hair, tied in a single knot, closed like a heart.

She fed them all to the beast of her own making, watched the way red-orange shifted to tinged pink and vibrant green, the way it swallowed her offerings whole.

Culmination became creation several months later, and Sakura reached into the flames with trembling fingers.

The fire reached back, licking up her arms, traveling over her skin until she gasped and the flames receded, slowly, regretfully, leaving only the presence of a tiny but thundering heartbeat in the palms of her shaking hands.

Sakura inhaled, eyes bright, and exhaled.

She parted her hands and gazed down at the sphere of her own making, charcoal-tinged and surrounded in unquenchable verdant flames, hot enough to sear into her skin. She felt tears breach the rim of her eyelids, slipping daintily down her cheeks, and her breath moved out of her in a single whoosh when the subtle shift of a heartbeat reached out to her fingertips.

“You’re perfect,” she whispered, reverent. “She’s going to love you.”

Because this, as all things Sakura seemed to find now-a-days, had all been for Hinata.

It was easy to admit that she loved her, now. Too easy to admit that the separation between the two of them was difficult, and that Sakura missed her before her feet ever left the comfort of the sandy shores. She had been thinking for months about what a proper gift would be, something that Hinata could carry with her always and be reminded of Sakura; for when Sakura would eventually have to travel again, and would need her heart back. But never permanently—there was so much of Sakura tied to the ocean, now. Her heart first and foremost.

To Hinata.

But she _would_ have to travel, eventually—moving around to aid those in need with healing magic, and those that would harm innocents with something _else_.

Sakura cradled the egg in her hands with the utmost care, even as she walked out into the night air. She didn’t stray far—she didn’t have to. Hinata would surely be miles deep in the boundless ocean, but Sakura had long since learned how to send messages to her with the magic that binds them. Something borne of love and of need, of joy that leads to expressive creation.

Of passion.

Sakura cradled the egg close to her empty chest with one hand, and threw out her free hand with a wild flare of explosive energy bursting forth from her fingertips, thinking only of Hinata’s sharp gaze, her shy smiling mouth, and the way Sakura’s heart felt safe in her care.

Sakura looked at her and _burned_ , so she painted living flames in the midnight sky and hoped somewhere in the depths of the bated ocean, a creature gleaming and glowing with every kind of matching heat might look up to her gift and ignite.

 

✧

 

Hinata did not travel anywhere without the egg Sakura had gifted her. She fashioned a satchel out of seaweed and coral, little bits of frayed twine, and tucked the egg against the dip of her waist. It rested just above the widened berth of her generous hips, alternating sides depending on the day, and Sakura’s eyes brightened every time she saw the tender way Hinata touched it—almost idly, ensuring that it was still with her, resting against her.

It was so _maternal_ , and Sakura devoured every single flickering expression of that feeling rising over Hinata’s face, and the tension in her shoulders when she felt a predator nearby, immediately shifting her stance to protect the egg. It was primitive, primal, the way satisfaction shifted in shades and cloying shadows inside of Sakura. She felt the same protectiveness for the creature of her own creation; seeing Hinata respond in kind was…invigorating.

It said a lot about how far they had come that Hinata had not hesitated for a moment to reach out for the fire-encapsulated egg when Sakura presented it to her—not a single flicker of fear or concern at the possibility of being burned at its touch.

Just simple, clinging affection as the egg shifted from Sakura’s heated fingertips to the ice of Hinata’s, and the flames flared from the brightest verdant flare to a mystical glowing violet that radiated the closer the egg was to Hinata’s heart.

Sakura swallowed, eyes flicking from Hinata’s face to the egg at her side, so lovingly tucked away within Hinata’s hand-crafted bag. Hinata’s fingertips rested under it, gently massaging, and Sakura knew without having to question it: Hinata was responding to the heartbeat, there, with gentleness overflowing.

That, Sakura had known since day one. Hinata was the gentlest creature she had ever met, protective and supportive, and she loved her.

Sakura loved her.

 

✧

 

Every time Sakura broached the topic of her heart and its possession, Hinata had another excuse to offer, shying away from Sakura’s candor. Sakura wasn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon, so it was easy to allow it. Somewhere, between the moment of curiosity as she first touched her fire and felt Hinata and now, with Sakura purposely leaving her heart in Hinata’s care, she’d learned to trust her. It had been weeks since they’d last discussed it, a minor argument between the two of them—mostly because Sakura knew the reason Hinata kept it, now, and Hinata was stubbornly against believing that Sakura actually trusted her enough not to leave her the moment Hinata gave it back.

Another time, though. They had all the time in the world before Sakura would need it back for her travels—for now, it was safest in Hinata’s hands. Or, Sakura thought with amusement, wherever she kept it.

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to swim,” Hinata was saying, swimming idly away from the shore as Sakura stepped carefully into the tides. “I don’t know how you kept this from me for _months_.”

Sakura grinned, despite her shakiness. This was another new kind of fear, she thought.

There were a lot of things she feared, when it came to Hinata. But no longer were they things that threatened her physically; life or death.

Instead, her fear ran deeper. Did Hinata trust her, the way she trusted Hinata? Would she return to Sakura every time, the way that Sakura would return to her?

Did she love Sakura, the way Sakura loved her? So much so that she left her actual heart willingly in Hinata’s hands, without apprehension, suspicion, or regret?

Rather, with joy.

“I’m sneaky like that,” she said, as the water nipped at her waist. Again, it was surprisingly warm compared to how Sakura had imagined it. She knew the reason for that, now, and of course it was because of Hinata and her kindness. She radiated a warmth that seeped throughout the water in a wide radius, heating it just enough to take the chill off. It took Sakura several months to realize that she only did it for Sakura’s sake.

“You sure are _something_ ,” Hinata sighed, and Sakura burst out laughing, eyes crinkling with delight.

“I love it when you’re sassy,” Sakura admitted, openly fond. She knew even before she looked that Hinata would be blushing, and true as rain, the bridge of her nose was a fine pink that spread out faintly over her cheeks.

When the water level reached just below Sakura’s breasts, she felt the kindling touch of apprehension. Hinata was close by, watching carefully but giving Sakura the space she had requested. She had given Sakura all of the power, allowing her to ask Hinata for help only when she thought she’d need it, and moving at her own pace. Hinata didn’t swim circles around her or anything so predatory, but there was still an ease of movement that Sakura amusedly thought was deliberate. Ridiculous, really, considering Hinata was a _mermaid_ , but Sakura was distracting herself from her slowly rising fear.

“Okay,” Sakura finally said, reaching out for Hinata with arms outstretched. “I need you now.”

Hinata was in arm’s reach in a blink, pulling Sakura against her chest. She was careful to arrange Sakura’s limbs around her without disturbing the egg at her side, tucked ever-lovingly close. She was wearing one of Sakura’s garments again, a simple lavender netting over her chest that complimented her fair skin enough to continuously draw Sakura’s eyes—even more than usual. It left her completely exposed, save for lavender against cream, but Hinata didn’t shy away from Sakura’s gaze.

She felt herself press flush against Hinata and even though it was far and away from the first time, the moment her skin came into contact with the slick smoothness of Hinata’s scales she felt chills race down her spine.

Sakura wrapped her arms around Hinata’s neck and without even thinking about what she was doing; she ran her fingers through the hairs above Hinata’s temple.

“Distracting,” Hinata mumbled, shivering, and Sakura couldn’t help but to smile. Apprehension became background noise in her own body and mind, as Sakura focused entirely on Hinata and the feeling of them pressed against each other. She wrapped her arms around Hinata’s neck and felt the way she moved so lightly while still remaining upright and floating. The water glowed violet by their hips, a reflection of the egg’s still-burning capsule even underwater.

“You have to let go so I can teach you,” Hinata whispered, words stirring the still-dry ends of Sakura’s hair, right by the sensitive skin of her ear. Sakura shivered and did the exact opposite, stubbornly pulling Hinata in closer until Sakura’s lips touched the shell of Hinata’s ear.

“Don’t want to,” She whispered, brazen and forthright. Hinata groaned, a quiet thing, and Sakura laughed even as Hinata peeled her away from her reach. Hinata held her under her arms and began to instruct her, strictly and seriously so as to cover her embarrassment at Sakura’s actions.

Sakura ceded defeat and reverted to the stellar student she normally was, and learned well under Hinata’s careful, meticulous tutelage. By the time the sun moved into the center of the sky, Sakura was a self-declared master of the doggy-paddle, and had no fear for the waves crashing over her—mostly because Hinata was keeping them on a leash.

Somewhere around the demonstration of freestyle swimming, Sakura began to lose focus on the lesson and pay attention to the way that Hinata’s body moved, and the way the sunlight caught in her pupil-less eyes. She swallowed, watching the way Hinata’s lips wrapped around her words, and Sakura felt her eyes fall, becoming heavy with desire. Hinata was as oblivious as always, her instruction unhindered.

And it was that obliviousness that finally pushed Sakura over the edge—that, and the way that Hinata continued to lovingly stroke the egg at her side.

Sakura ignored Hinata’s instructions and lifted her hand from the water, a gentle yet insistent incantation already on her lips. Hinata glanced at her questioningly, concern lacing her depthless gaze as Sakura lifted her palm to the sky and curled her fingers at her. It was a simple gesture, and had it been anyone else, it would have just been that.

But Sakura had spoken a familiar incantation and the water around Hinata shifted, bubbling and writhing, and before Hinata could even gasp the tides rushed towards Sakura as though she had her own gravitational pull. It was showy and silly but Sakura didn’t care, it brought her the result she wanted.

Hinata didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around Sakura’s neck the moment the water pushed them together and washed around them, but she did so for all the wrong reasons.

“Are you tired?” Hinata asked quietly, and her grip on Sakura was protective, worried that she might be too tired to keep herself afloat. Her hearts thundered against Sakura, one in her chest, one by her hip, and one hidden away somewhere but suspiciously close to Sakura’s own chest.

Sakura was desperate enough that she would let her think as much, so long as it meant that Hinata would hold her. Hinata kept them afloat, bobbing against the slow tides, and murmured quiet reassurances and praise in Sakura’s ear. Her concern shifted from protective to supportive, worrying less about exhaustion and more about defeated confidence the longer Sakura remained silent.

Her concern and her care were so touching that Sakura couldn’t help it—she truly could not have held back had she tried with all of her might.

She pulled back from her perch tucked against Hinata’s throat and looked down into her beautiful eyes, tracing the wet hairs stuck to her cheeks, and the bright redness of her worried lips, and Sakura wondered when exactly she had fallen for Hinata.

She leaned in without further hesitation, and pressed their lips together with equal parts passion and tenderness. Hinata was so innocent that Sakura didn’t want to frighten her, but she couldn’t keep pretending that she was looking at Hinata with anything less than open admiration every time they came together.

She shifted her head and nudged her nose against Hinata’s, encouraging her to breathe, to be receptive to the way Sakura’s lips moved over hers, the way her teeth bit lightly and playfully against Hinata’s lower lip. Hinata’s lips parted a moment later, around a gasp, and Sakura tightened her hold on her and moved in with determination. It was easy for her to assert herself, to lick and bite at Hinata’s lips and tongue until she began to respond.

And oh, how pleasantly Hinata _responded_.

A few experimental tugs at Sakura’s own lip were all it took for Hinata to warm up to reciprocation, before her arms tightened around Sakura’s waist and she pushed in against her more determinedly. Sakura moaned, and Hinata’s breathlessness sent tingles down her spine, excitement bubbling up in her.

Hinata was the first to pull away, breathless and flushed, eyes wide and heavy in _just_ the way that Sakura frequently dreamed about. That was more than enough to make Sakura groan and dive back in, tracing the edges of Hinata’s teeth with her tongue and pulling back to nip at Hinata’s upper lip hard enough to _cut_.

Hinata hissed, and her fingers dug in against the skin of Sakura’s back with a stinging onslaught, bite for bite.

“I’ve wanted this for _ages_ ,” Sakura breathed heavily against Hinata’s cheek, the moment she pulled back to pepper kisses across her skin, down to the hinge of her jawline and her subtle transparent gills, where she promptly began to suck at their edges. Hinata groaned, the quietest expression of pleasure that had Sakura groaning in response, a new kind of fire igniting within her.

Sakura paid special attention to the column of Hinata’s throat, but was too caught up in the moment to remember to feel specifically for that extra pulse—to search for it felt like betrayal, anyways. And yet, had she been lucid enough, she might have wondered and laughed at whether or not she could distinguish her heartbeat from Hinata’s.

“Me too,” Hinata whispered, so very quietly. The only sounds around them were the curling and unfurling of the waves against the shore, their heavy breaths between each other, and the slow constant hum of the egg between them. “I’ve wanted you since the moment I first saw you.”

“Oh,” Sakura gasped, breathy and overwhelmed with sudden and striking understanding; puzzle pieces fell into place and Sakura pressed her smile as a kiss against Hinata’s lips, quick and doting. “That’s why, isn’t it? Why you took my heart.”

Hinata did not shy away from Sakura’s gaze, and that more than anything else was how Sakura knew that she was being genuine, despite her embarrassment with the situation and her discomfort with discussing Sakura’s heart, and the possibility of giving it back.

“Yes,” Hinata admitted, an answer to a question that Sakura had been pondering for more than half of a year. “Yes, that’s why.”

“It’s yours,” Sakura breathed, pushing forward to press their foreheads together, eyes crinkling shut with her open expression of unabashed joy. “It’s always been yours, Hinata.”

And then, quieter and pressed against the skin of Hinata’s throat: “It will still be yours, always, even after you give it back.”

Sakura felt Hinata go still under her hands, her forehead, her lips. She could hear her take careful breaths, finding her words, and Sakura merely continued to press small smiling kisses against her throat.

It seemed an eternity passed between them before Hinata finally spoke, and her words were enough to blow Sakura completely out of the water.

“Sakura-san,” she said, so heartbreakingly _gentle_ , “I returned your heart months ago.”

And it was Sakura’s turn to freeze, becoming as still as the bottom of the ocean from which Hinata came. She pulled back slowly, trying to catch her breath and pin down her sparking thoughts. The chaos of her natural character erupted around them, but the moment she met Hinata’s eyes everything fell to the wayside and the world became so very _quiet_ , until all Sakura could hear was the sound of water lapping against her skin and Hinata’s, and the undeniable thumping of her heart, from within her own _chest_.

“Oh,” Sakura breathed, as Hinata’s lips slowly lifted into a smile so beautiful Sakura had no power to control herself against. She leaned in and pressed Hinata’s name against her own lips, wrapped up in nothing less than love.

It’s absurd, she realized, that she hadn’t noticed before. She pulled back her hand and settled it over the skin of Hinata’s chest, right over her heart, and she could feel the rebound of her pulse against her fingertips. After a moment, Hinata mirrored her gesture and placed her hand over Sakura’s heart, and together both of them felt the truth of Hinata’s words.

Sakura’s heart rejoiced against the pressure of Hinata’s hand, as if begging to return home to her, and Sakura had to laugh. How bizarre to have grown so comfortable with Hinata holding her heart that she hadn’t even felt a difference when Hinata returned it to her—it was powerful, Sakura realized, to love someone that much. To have a transfer of something so vital, with no noticeable shift, because whether her heart was in her chest or in Hinata’s, it was still warmed by Hinata’s love and that was all that _mattered_ anymore.

And that was what made Sakura feel so indescribably _light_ —it hadn’t been because of the absence of an organ, an integral part of her missing. It had been the space she had put between she and Hinata every time she returned home and left Hinata in the depths of the ocean, treading water and watching Sakura walk home with eyes that miss _nothing_. It had been the way every worry and pressure felt abated just by looking into Hinata’s loving gaze.

“Oh,” Sakura said again, and couldn’t help but to laugh. She opened her eyes and looked down at Hinata and her swollen lips, her blushing cheeks, the heavy-lidded eyes that watched Sakura so unerringly and Sakura felt her heart lurch in just the same way she always knew that it would. It made sense. She had fallen in love with a woman whose name meant _sunny place_ , and Sakura’s heart had never felt so warm. “Oh, I love you.”

Hinata blinked, startled and pleased, and this time she was the one to lean in and steal a kiss from Sakura’s smiling lips.

Hinata pressed a smile of her own there and said, “And I love _you_.”

Sakura could not stop smiling, not for the life of her. She wrapped her arms back around Hinata’s neck and leaded forward, just enough to rest their foreheads together once more. She laughed when Hinata’s hands wandered over her skin, exploring with adorable hesitancy, and Sakura couldn’t help but to tease her.

“You do realize,” she began, genuinely amused. “That you literally stole my heart, in every way that could have meaning.”

Hinata blinked up at Sakura with what began as surprise and quickly faded into amused exasperation, which only caused Sakura’s smile to grow wider, before Hinata tightened her hold and Sakura felt the wispy touch of Hinata’s fins wrapping loosely, covetously around her legs.

“Well, it only seemed fair,” Hinata grumbled, pushing forward to nestle in against Sakura’s neck until she could press her lips right up against Sakura’s pulse.

“Since you had already stolen mine.”

And then, the subtle heat of new creation:

The flames around the egg burst and crisped, ashes floating through the ocean, and when Hinata lifted it up in her hands between she and Sakura, the baby dragon made of everything they loved about each other took his first breath.

“Welcome,” they said, in unison, so softly.

And their hearts, all three of them, began to beat as one.

“Welcome to being.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! [♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPNgq4ZRxKg)


End file.
